Sheena Sood’s Bold, Handmade Designs Will Keep Your Seasonal Affective Disorder at Bay

Sheena Sood, a former assistant designer for Tracy Reese, came up with the name for her fashion label in 2013 during the final stretch of winter. She was tucked away in her Brooklyn apartment designing her first capsule collection of vivid printed-silk ready-to-wear and dreaming of the sunny, warmer temperatures of Bahia, Brazil.

“I remembered how the fruit sellers on the beaches would yell out the names of the fruits in a musical kind of way,” Sood says. “I always loved the word abacaxi, the way it’s pronounced (uh-bah-ka-shee) and spelled. It’s the Portuguese word for pineapple.” Sood named her line abacaxi, and designed it to “imbue that tropical, happy, sunny, and carefree vibe of the beach in Morro de São Paulo, Bahia.” She spent a year working with a small boutique that specialized in ethical fashion before fully launching her brand in 2018. Today, her abacaxi collections consist of dip-dyed turtlenecks and overalls as well as biker shorts, hoodies, and dresses made from hand-spun Indian cotton. Everything is produced in Delhi and made using traditional artisan craftsmen in India, where Sood’s parents hail from.

“I was only eight months old the first time I went to India,” the well-traveled designer says. She’s toured all over the world for inspiration, from Brazil to Tanzania to Indonesia, but India is the place that really moves her creatively. “The earliest memories I have are going to the markets with my aunts and my mom and getting my first glimpses at the kaleidoscopic variety of fabrics there.” She adds, “The richness and variety of South Asian textiles and clothing silhouettes is really what inspired my love for fashion to begin with.” Sood says that to date, some of her most precious and favorite abacaxi designs are those that incorporate elements from traditional outfits like lehenga skirts, sari draping, sari blouses, or dupatta scarves. “My heritage really feels like an endless source of inspiration to me.” Her new collection incorporates color-block crochet, hand-loomed cotton ikat, and hand-dyed cottons. Sood’s designs are meant to transport the wearer somewhere else, somewhere that is bright and warm. She’s titled the new offering “Fruit Nostalgia,” a term meant to evoke the happy, surprising sensation of tasting exotic, tropical fruits for the first time.

Sood is also devoted to protecting the environment and promoting “slow” fashion. Some of the pieces in her recent collections feature upcycled sari material on top of the rest of the collection, which utilizes organic fibers and materials. “I believe it’s vitally important to design clothes that will last for years,” she says. “Garments that have been tie-dyed, woven, or embellished by hand have an additional depth and history behind them. My hope is that this lasting, handmade feeling comes across with each piece that I design.” She continues, “As consumers, I think we can easily forget that every sewn or crocheted garment, fast fashion or not, is made by hand, by a human.”